"Strong support for devolving powers from the EU to member states: By a margin of two to one (50% in favour, 26% against), German voters say the next German Chancellor should back the efforts by some European politicians to decentralise powers from the EU tothe national, regional or local level."

German euroscepticism seems increasingly deep-seated, over a number of policy areas

The European Parliament and the EU Commission are also viewed as the two most untrustworthy institutions by German voters - further testimony to the stereotype of teutonic common sense.

This has potentially interesting connotations for David Cameron's renegotiation. I've long been sceptical of his chances for success (particularly given the woeful Balance of Competences review), but the new polling suggests widespread sympathy among European electorates for his position.

Lord Ashcroft wrote yesterday on this site, while analysing his latest poll from Conservative-Labour marginals, that he is more optimistic about the Tories' chances at the next election than the survey "might at first glance give reason to be". A brief look at its findings indeed provides no cheer for David Cameron, since "Labour’s lead in these seats has grown from nine to 14 points over the
last two years, largely because of the defection of Tory voters to UKIP". Our proprietor's reasoning is that since leadership matters to voters, and David Cameron continues to lead Ed Miliband in that respect, Labour's lead in those marginals will fall as the election approaches.

A growing dataset has emerged over the last few months suggesting a rightwards shift among the young. Be it in the beliefs younger voters hold or the more modest shift in the party they support, it seems that Generation Y are striking out in a different direction to their parents.

More evidence comes today in a new Demos report, Generation Strains, in which the authors examine polling data on the views of different generations on the welfare state. Some of the results are predictable and driven by life-cycle, such as the tendency for young adults to make child benefit a high priority. Others, though, point to generational changes in opinion.

For example, look at the proportion of people in each generation who agree that "the creation of the welfare state is one of Britain's proudest achievements" (all graphs from Demos):

The young are strikingly less enthusiastic about the welfare state than the old.

I don't believe that polls can tell us much about voting intention this far out from an election, but my summary of where we are is as follows:

Conservatives: The Guardian properly leads today on the rise in the proportion of respondents backing the Tory economic team over the Labour one: the proportion supporting the former has soared from 28 per cent in June to 40 per cent now. But this support isn't being carried over into voting intention, at least yet. The Party is coming consistently polling about a third of the vote.

Labour: ICM is showing Labour lower than the other two pollsters who've conducted samples recently. These suggest that the running August story over Ed Miliband's leadership problems is doing nothing to prevent it holding a healthy lead over the Tories. If you punch today's tracker figures into Electoral Calculus's general election calculator, it will produce an emphatic Labour majority of 88.

It's true that Labour's rating is a long way south of where the main opposition party should hope to be now, and I suspect that as the election approaches David Cameron will narrow the gap. The Liberal Democrats should do better in the seats they hold than their ratings above suggest. And there's nothing to suggest that UKIP will fall as low as the three per cent they won in 2010.

None the less, the Conservatives have to open up a lead of between seven per cent and ten per cent on polling day for David Cameron to gain a majority - unless they perform extraodinarily well in the marginals (see this piece by YouGov's Peter Kellner). I have a £100 bet with Dan Hodges that this won't happen, though it is certainly possible that we will be the biggest party.

All in all, there is no good reason to believe that there will be a majority Tory government after 2015, and thus none, either, for the current wave of Conservative optimism. But Tory MPs in marginal seats are cheered by the belief that they've a better chance of holding them, and we're all cheered further by the cosmic uselessness of the worst opposition since Michael Foot's.

Don’t get me wrong, immigration wasn’t
actually on trial yesterday. This was just the name of a research event put on
by Lord Ashcroft Polls: “Immigration on Trial”. The aim was to gather a
range of public opinion about immigration under one roof, and press and prod
its skinfolds. The readings that emerged would supplement a nationwide survey,
with some 20,000 respondents, that has already been conducted and that will be
published soon. In his introductory remarks, Lord Ashcroft referred to it all
as “the most comprehensive and detailed account of people’s attitudes towards
immigration in Britain”.

And so, nearly one hundred people congregated
at 9.30am in the Park Plaza hotel near London’s Victoria Station. They had been
selected according to pre-defined attitudes towards immigration. Each
group was seated around a table, ten in all, and joined by a moderator. For the
next six hours, with breaks for food and drink, they’d discuss the issue at
hand. “It’s like focus groups meets speed dating,” explained one of the
attendant pollsters.

Ah, there’s that phrase: “focus group”.
Before we continue, I feel two things ought to be said about it. The first is
that focus groups don’t deserve the sneers they sometimes attract. Removed from
behind the oak-panelled doors of Westminster, as it was yesterday, it becomes
clear: they’re a very useful means of gauging public opinion. Here were various
people, of numerous incomes, backgrounds, ethnicities, persuasions and creeds,
all giving their take on a seriously serious subject. A politician needn’t be
led or swayed by the information that emerges from it – they might simply be
informed.

And the second is that there have rarely, if
ever, been focus groups such as this. A normal focus group might involve one of
the tables at yesterday’s event. Here, there were nine others as well. And
pains were taken to make the whole process as “interactive” as possible, not
just a list of what-do-you-think questions. Throughout the day, there were
presentations and video clips for the audience to respond to. They were armed
with little gizmos (pictured to the right) through which they could express
their views. Even from the sidelines, where I was skulking with my laptop, it
was all very engaging.

The first session of the day saw those gizmos
put to instant use. To establish a framework for the ensuing discussion, people
bashed out their immediate thoughts on immigration. And the nature of those
thoughts? Peering over the pollsters’ shoulders, one thing struck me: this
wasn’t so much an outpouring of public opinion, as a general appeal for facts.
Most of the audience members were asking questions rather than making
statements:

“How many immigrants in prison?”

“How many immigrants are on benefits?”

“How would you describe Britishness?”

And the answers? They started to come in a
pair of presentations that had been arranged for the morning. The first was by
Sunder Katwala of British Future, and was broadly pro-immigration. He set about
listing various benefits that immigration has brought to Britain – from
entrepreneurialism to student fees – but was careful to address some of the
downsides, and how they might be curbed. “I see very few benefits to Britain if we have immigration without
integration,” is how he put it in his conclusion – to nodding from the more
sceptical tables.

The
second was from Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatch, who was there to question
the scale of the immigration that this country has experienced over the past
few decades. “When we have arrivals on this scale, it becomes very difficult to
achieve integration in our society,” he said. Ear-catchingly, he also suggested
that, as Lord Ashcroft tweeted, “he’s
coming to the view that EU membership may not be compatible with controlling
immigration”. This is not something that MigrationWatch has loudly broadcast
before now.

Of course, the response to these
presentations was varied. Weaving through the tables after each, I heard
remarks such as “good sense”, “fantasy”, “spin”. That was the nature of this
crowd.

After lunch, a session from which more certain
conclusions could be drawn – at least from my perspective. And this was when
the technology really impressed. Three short video clips were played, of each
of the three main party leaders – Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and David Cameron, in
that order – talking about immigration. The audience members were then to bash
furiously at the numbers on their gizmos, registering either their approval or
disapproval of what they heard. Press 1, and it would mean “strongly disagree”.
Press 5, and it would mean “strongly agree”. A live “worm poll” was simultaneously
constructed out of everyone’s responses, as pictured to the right.

The result would have been rather
disconcerting for the Coalition parties. Miliband – yes, Miliband – seemed to come out on
top. He was followed by Cameron and then Clegg. What won it for Miliband was his insistence,
at least in this clip, that immigrants should be able to speak English. What
lost it for Clegg was disbelief, even laughter, at the government achievements
he claimed. When he said that the Coalition had cut net migration by a third,
you could almost hear a collective “yeah, right” ripple through the audience –
even though the Lib Dem leader was speaking the truth. And this response wasn’t
just reserved for Tuition Fees Nick. Cameron got some of it, too.

And it didn’t get much better for the
Coalition partners in the final session of the day. Here, the tables were
presented with some modest proposals for immigration policy. Depending on which
group you listened to, some did like and some didn’t like ideas such as, “Impose
an annual limit on the migration from outside the EU” – but there was
widespread uncertainty about whether these were already Government policy or
not. It brought proceedings back to those questions asked in the first session:
however much the politicians blather on, voters still aren’t sure of the facts.

“We’ve certainly gleaned a lot from all of
you today,” said Lord Ashcroft in his closing remarks. We shall have to wait
for the final report, due later this month, to see just how much that “lot” is
– but, from what I saw yesterday, it’s likely to contain much for the party
leadership to ponder. Trust is a sparse commodity in British politics. You can
probably underline and italicise that fact when it comes to immigration.

Over at Political Betting,Mike Smithson has written and tweeted that "Opinium is only online pollster that takes no steps to ensure politically balanced sample. Doesn't even ask about GE2010 vote".

What's not in dispute, however, is the trend - so, for example, UKIP were at 17% with ComRes last weekend. As Anthony Wells has put it: "The correct approach is to look at the broad underlying trend and ignore
the odd looking polls, the media normally do the opposite.

"The trend is
that UKIP support has jumped substantially following their local
election success, and that the Labour lead has been narrowing." Downing Street is hoping that better economic news pushes UKIP's figure down and trims Ed Miliband's lead back further.

As some close followers of political polling may recall, Survation dropped a mini-bombshell earlier in the week when they reported the Conservatives on 24% and UKIP snapping at their heels on 22%. As with any outlying poll there were suggestions it was a blip.

Tomorrow's MoS poll, though, repeats the pollster's earlier finding:

Conservative: 24% (no change)

Labour: 35% (-1)

Liberal Democrat: 10% (-1)

UKIP: 22% (nc)

Another Party: 9% (+1)

Within Survation's panel and methodology the surprisingly close gap between the Tories and UKIP is consistent.

The methodology is worth a mention. While most polls only mention the three traditional parties upfront, requiring respondents to volunteer UKIP as their choice, Survation prompt UKIP in a four-party choice. They also weight the results based on respondents' likelihood to vote - given UKIP's higher support among older voters, that boosts their Survation results further.

The detail buried in the tables is interesting, too. (They're here in PDF format if anyone's interested). As Mike Smithson of Political Betting points out, UKIP's support includes a massive gender divide - 27% of men to 16% of women. It's very possible Farage's blokey image is contributing to that by deterring female voters.

The poll also includes questions about the aftermath of the Woolwich terrorist attack. Encouragingly, it shows that the public are opposed to the possible return of the Snoopers' Charter by a margin of 47% - 40%. It seems the days of kneejerk introduction of legal restrictions on our freedom in the aftermath of such atrocities may be behind us.

This week, ConservativeHome's "Getting to Know U-KIP" series explores the reality of the party hitting the headlines - who they are, how they work and what they believe. Today's piece is an introduction to UKIPpers, and asks what motivates them, why they do what they do, and what implications that has for British - and particularly Conservative - politics.

In June 2004, buoyed by the high profile declaration of support by Robert Kilroy-Silk, UKIP reached 26,000 members. It was a heady moment for the party - and one that would not last. Within months, the tangerine TV man had stormed out and the new recruits were melting away.

Last Tuesday, UKIP broke that 26,000 record for the first time. They are booming at grassroots level, as well as in the polls. They now have two targets - to reach 30,000 members by the time their party conference begins in September, and to hang onto the new recruits this time.

But who are the UKIPpers? We know what senior Conservatives think of them - from Michael Howard's "cranks and gadflies" and David Cameron's infamous "fruitcakes and closet racists" to Ken Clarke's disastrous "clowns" comment on the eve of the local elections. And yet despite the abuse, they are still on the march - for clowns they are very serious, and they have proved unusually long lived for supposed gadflies.

Understanding them matters - without an insight into their motivations, their history and their views then Conservatives have no way to come up with an informed response. Whether you want to defeat UKIP, ally with them or bring them into the Tory fold, you stand no chance of success if you don't know them.